


still life with asshole and Cimbali

by coldhope



Category: Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Coffee Shops & Cafés, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-01
Updated: 2016-04-01
Packaged: 2018-05-30 12:09:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,349
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6423397
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/coldhope/pseuds/coldhope
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Written for kromitar and raffe's amazing <a href="http://kromitar.tumblr.com/tagged/first-order-coffee-au">coffeeshop AU</a> over on tumblr. Hux is the store manager for one of the First Order coffeeshop locations, and Ren is not very good with customers, and it just gets worse from there. </p>
<p>~</p>
<p>This goddamn disaster of a new hire -- not his doing, Snoke’s personal decision, thank you very much CEO Snoke, charmed I’m sure -- is the equivalent of a customer-service <i>black hole</i>. Apparently he’d actually worked at fucking <i>Irresistible</i> before ditching them for the First Order, he’s related to the woman who owns the place, and Hux devoutly wishes they’d take him back. Most of the time.</p>
            </blockquote>





	still life with asshole and Cimbali

“Order and method.” 

He’d made the reference in his initial interview with Snoke, and Hux was fairly sure it had been responsible for the job offer -- with the unspoken rider that he had better _maintain_ that order and that method if he wished to continue in his new position. Order and goddamn _method_.

It had been...rather easier than Hux expected, honestly. Once he’d made certain he himself understood every facet of the First Order shop’s infrastructure, knew where the air-conditioning vents were and where to place the tables accordingly so that customers didn’t find themselves blasted by icy air in midsummer, knew the particular quirks of their machines, the way one of the portafilters is juuuuust slightly bent out of true so that it takes an extra effort to lock it in place on the group head but not badly enough to require replacement, the supply schedule and how much to order when -- once he was confident he knew the place, then he could turn his attention to the people.

You’re always going to have turnover in a job like this, and he wasn’t surprised when Finn quit; there had been a definite mismatch between employee and job environment there, although Hux had never had to worry about Finn’s actual performance. The kid was technically very good, and smiled at people the way you needed to smile, but, well. You needed to be able to put your life on a shelf when you clocked in and collect it again once you were out, and not get existential about things. Finn is not one of Nature’s customer-service representatives. And that’s okay. 

(Neither is Hux, to be honest, but there is a difference between the job you love and the job that enables you to eat and sleep indoors, and have a few of the things you actually like.)

But this goddamn disaster of a new hire -- not his doing, Snoke’s personal decision, thank you very much CEO Snoke, charmed I’m sure -- is the equivalent of a customer-service _black hole_. Apparently he’d actually worked at fucking _Irresistible_ before ditching them for the First Order, he’s related to the woman who owns the place, and Hux devoutly wishes they’d take him back. Most of the time. 

He watches Ren doing what Ren apparently fondly imagines to be _mopping the floor_ , a duty to which he has been relegated after the third time he actually yelled at a customer out loud. Theoretically Ren is supposed to be Hux’s assistant manager, but he would so very much rather give that particular title to Phasma, who knows what the fuck she is doing and can sustain the convincing smile reasonably well under stress. Team Leader is as good as he can manage, and she’s doing a damn good job with that. Ren is beyond Hux’s control: his employment and assignment is entirely up to Snoke, and that...rankles, from time to time. 

_There has got_ , Hux thinks, watching Ren mope along with the mop, _there has got to be_ something _he can do._ In the slow hours both he and Phasma have been trying to train him, and he’s burned himself on a steam wand and left the milk out on the counter and forgotten to tamp the damn grounds properly into the portafilter and experimented with the flavor syrups and just…

_Order_ , Hux thinks, taking a deep breath, _and method_.

So it comes as rather a surprise when Ren steps directly into his, Hux’s, personal space, takes Hux’s face between his hands -- they’re good hands, at least, despite the chipped black nail polish -- and kisses him. 

Badly. 

It is the first time Hux has been kissed since...well, since quite a long time ago, and Ren is...not very good at it. Or not good at it under these conditions, which amount to _ambush_.

Hux freezes solid, and Ren lets go of him and pulls back a little, and says “Um,” and _what the fuck?_ Hux wishes to know. And says as much. 

He is entirely confused by the look on Ren’s face (visible, because he has his hair pulled back in a messy knot, sans the regulation hairnet _as usual_ ) -- because it is both hurt and puzzled and somehow _devastated_. As if he had been expecting some other reaction. 

Ren mutters something and abruptly bolts for the door, and Hux is left with the immediate somatic memory of unexpected touch, and…

_Order and method_ , he tells himself, and so he goes to make sure Ren hasn’t left his mop and bucket standing around in the middle of the seating area, and that nobody is waiting for orders, and only then -- when Hux has satisfied himself that nothing on this side of the door is bleeding -- does he go out to the alley to find Ren. 

Who is sitting on the ground with his knees drawn up and his face buried against them, the hair freed from its elastic, looking much smaller than he has any right to look when he’s at least an inch taller than Hux himself. 

“You’re an idiot,” Hux points out.

Ren doesn’t move, except perhaps to hunch in tighter, make himself even smaller. Hux notices, and wishes very much he had not noticed, the way Ren’s goddamn feet are turned in, the toe of one regrettable Converse pressed over the other. “No, you,” Ren mutters to the concrete of the alley floor.

Hux leans against the door and attempts to explain what ought to be _incredibly fucking obvious_ to anyone with half a functioning prefrontal cortex. One does not simply _kiss someone_ out of the blue. It’s...well. Among many other things it’s unseemly.

He doesn’t actually know what prompts him to go on beyond that, and is a little appalled to hear his own words, and realize even as he says them that they are...well, true. He _isn’t_ , astonishingly enough, entirely opposed to the idea. Just...not like _this_. And Ren is...Ren is pretty much the complete antithesis of everything he strives for, so hard, all day, Ren is chaos and unpredictability where Hux is grimly attempting to maintain order and method, and…

… _fuck_. Ren is crying. That’s not okay. He cannot be having with that. 

Hux gives up on order, method, and appropriate workplace behavior, and slides down the wall to sit next to Ren. “Is that how you really feel?” he hears himself ask, because...honestly, he’s not at all sure why Ren _would_. But a lot of things are falling into place, now. Small strangenesses, now made into one large contiguous strangeness. 

“...Do you _have_ to ask?” 

At least Ren has un-hunched a little, is now sitting up rather than burying his head in his folded arms. Hux is --

Hux is not at all sure what to _do_ , because none of this is in any employee manual he has ever been granted the opportunity to read, and Ren is...really much more compelling than he has any right to be, and, just, maybe if he does this, which he is trying not to want to do, maybe if he does this it’ll just _settle down_ again. Maybe he wants to, just once. Maybe he --

Ren is looking at him anxiously, all big dark eyes. “Okay, you need to say something, you _dick_ , I can’t read you at --”

Hux hangs order and method on a hook out of the way, and reaches over to cup his hand to Ren’s cheek -- damp with tears, fuck, _fuck_ \-- and despite all his better instincts, despite the nagging apprehension that this is not the correct thing to do, that this is opening up so many more rifts than it can possibly bridge -- leans in, and kisses him. Just once. That’s all. They’re square. 

Hux thinks sometimes that he’d like to go into a less emotionally fraught line of work -- hostage negotiation, perhaps -- but just now, just in this moment, at this time and in this place, he is briefly glad of what and where he is, _briefly_ ; before the world resumes the even tenor of its ways.


End file.
